The UK’s biggest pub landlord today said it had largely completed plans to dispose of a large chunk of its estate after raising £264 million from the sale of more than 1,000 venues over two years.

Enterprise Inns, which had 6,143 leasehold and tenant pubs at March 31, said it will continue to sell underperforming pubs but at more normal levels.

The Solihull-based group sold 131 properties in the six months to March, raising £89 million and making a £10 million profit on the disposals, although its net debt still stands at £2.9 billion.

The sell-off has hit earnings at the group, with underlying pre-tax profits down 13 per cent to £64 million and like-for-like net income across the whole estate dropping 1.6 per cent.

The group said given current economic uncertainty it was still not appropriate to resume paying a dividend to shareholders.

Chief executive Ted Tuppen said the company had been subjected to “extremely challenging conditions” over the past four years, with cost pressures, consumer weakness and political interference among factors making life difficult for Enterprise and its publicans.

Over 94 per cent of net income comes from pubs let on substantive agreements and like-for-like income in these pubs is showing steady improvement at 1.5 per cent growth year-on-year, while the like-for-like decline in the total estate was an improvement on the 5 per cent decline in the same period last year.

There continues to be regional variations in performance, Enterprise said, with substantive like-for-like income growing at around 2 per cent in the Midlands and South, while the North has stabilised with flat sales during the period.

The group added that it had invested £39 million in the period at more than 1,100 pubs. It has written down the value of pubs moved to assets held for resale by £16 million

For the full year, it expects to deliver total sale proceeds of around £200 million, followed by a further £150 million next year.